


Heart's Desire

by Alona



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-27 21:06:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17774228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alona/pseuds/Alona
Summary: Featuring a wish, a magical sea, and one Hell of a penny dropping on Jonathan Strange.





	Heart's Desire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [summerdayghost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerdayghost/gifts).



"And if I have read the signs rightly, which I flatter myself I have, the tunnel to the Dreaming Queen's bark will open in another twenty-five hours and ten minutes. In the meantime, we can direct our energies to the problem of unraveling the final enchantment. I believe you had a notion about..." 

Strange's voice faded, and his eyes, which had been wandering around the room, fixed upon some particular point. Mr Norrell waited without any especial trouble to discover what had attracted Strange's attention; often such pauses, brought on by seemingly meaningless objects, were a prelude to his companion's most brilliant insights. 

Not so this time. 

"Has it been raining, sir?" Strange asked absently, standing and drifting towards a window.

"I do not believe – " Mr Norrell began, but he was arrested by the sight that had so impressed Strange. In the darkness beyond the window it was visible only as an ever-shifting glitter of lamplight: a mass of water lapping against the glass. Now that he knew to listen for it, Mr Norrell could hear the faint sloshing and smacking it made. At once he was all alarm. "The library! The books!" he exclaimed. "Mr Strange, what can be done? They will all be soaked!" 

"Calm yourself, sir," Strange responded steadily. "I am sure you recall the potency of the current spell of protection upon the library. You cannot well have forgotten, when not a month back it held some hundred of Hell's most irksomely determined demons at bay for two nights and a day of their own infernal calendar – what is a little water to that? Indeed, what are all the oceans of the terrestrial globe?" 

"I suppose you are right," said Norrell, seeming so readily calmed that Strange had the uncharitable suspicion that his alarm had been somewhat manufactured for the pleasure of having it soothed away. "Shall we go and see how far this water extends?" Norrell added, in a manner that was almost cheerful. 

All cheer was at an end when they opened the front door and beheld the answer.

As far as the two magicians could judge, the flood that had come up around the house was boundless. A strong briny smell came from it. Even Strange felt chilled and unhappy at the sight of the dark, rolling waters of this unnatural sea, which shone with the reflected light of stars fiercer and brighter than those that filled the sky of the Pillar of Night. Here and there among the blackness of the sky between the stars there seemed to be a fitful glow to answer the lights shifting across the waters. 

At once Strange took new hope from the thought that here might be a power that would free him from the darkness, if only he could find the proper way to ask. How did one entreat a magical sea? 

Deep in his optimistic thoughts, he took a step out the open door. The water, which to that moment had swirled around the steps as if waiting patiently to be let in, rose in an enormous wave and rolled through the door. Strange was pushed back inside. He and Norrell were both engulfed by the wave – and very cold and bitterly salty they found it – and Norrell would have been swept off his feet had Strange not reached out to steady him. 

Then the wave withdrew, leaving only a shallow puddle at their feet. 

Mr Norrell sneezed. 

"God bless you, sir," muttered Strange. "And my blessings upon you, o strange sea," he called, formally, "if you would but assure us of your peaceful intentions. Perhaps we may even be of some small assistance to you." He had meant to add that perhaps the sea could aid them in turn but was put off by the realization that he could not move his feet from the puddle. Still, his tone remained mild and unshaken, marred only by a trace of irritation. 

The sea spoke. 

It spoke from Strange's bones, from his back teeth and from the soft places around his eyes. It was an inescapable, a horrible voice that set everything in his head rattling. From Norrell's small moan, he supposed he was at least not alone in the experience. 

What the sea said was: "I have brought you to my domain, magician. By your heart's desire, which you thought to beg of me, I trap you." 

"Really? And what is it I desire, o sea?" Strange grew more irritable as his alarm increased. He felt freezing numbness spreading up his legs, and the spells he had been silently working to free himself were having no effect. 

The sea said: "You well know." 

At least it had been brief. Strange answered, "I assure you I do not. Sir, have you also found yourself immobilized by our guest?"

Mr Norrell had been rooted where he stood by dread and the discomfort of his water-logged state. At Strange's words, however, he took a step forward and another back, placing his feet carefully to avoid splashing the chilly, faintly glowing water about. "No," he said, "I am at liberty, though I will catch my death of cold soon enough. As for this sea of yours, Mr Strange, which I do not call a guest, I believe I have read something – "

The intolerable voice of the sea spoke over him: "You will not long remain free. Tell me what it is you desire." 

Norrell, whether compelled magically or by the dreadful mastery in that voice, answered at once and rather dismally: "Some dry shoes and stockings." 

The sea growled, which was the most disagreeable thing of all. Strange would not have been surprised to find his bones splintering apart and his teeth trickling from his lips, neither of which, fortunately, did happen, though the numbness continued to ascend, just as if water he could not see were rising around him. 

"Fool!" growled the sea. "That is not a heart's desire. That is hardly even a caprice. What do you want, little magician?" 

"I should like," said Norrell, incensed, "to sit down. I should like to return to my work. And I should like you to leave. I do not precisely know what it is you want from us, but it is evident you mean us harm. You are getting the floor wet!" 

Strange would have laughed, had the numbing cold not been reaching towards his heart. When they had begun their wanderings, every fresh danger had brought on an access of terror for Norrell that had long outlasted the threat; he now seemed so inured that after some initial anguish he was satisfied to exercise his bad temper on the problem. It may have been habit, or it may have been the knowledge that so far he and Strange had been equal to every challenge they had met – though in some cases they had been equal only to escaping with sufficient alacrity, with all but pride intact. 

The would-be laugh emerged as a strangled yelp. 

"Mr Strange?" asked Norrell. "Are you in some distress?" 

"Oh, no," said Strange airily, "only being frozen and squeezed. Assistance would – " He paused to gasp. He would need to speak briefly. "Any time," he concluded, and then he could force no more words past the constricting vice gripping his lungs and throat. He supposed he would have to resign himself to an icy and unpleasant death; any moment the sea would worm out of Norrell's mind the name of whatever tome it was he most coveted, and there would be an end of all. 

"Release him," said Norrell urgently, his voice thin and decidedly unimpressive but unwavering. 

"He is lost already," the sea rumbled. "Soon you will be as well. All beings desire something. The desires of mortal men, even if they be magicians, are easily found out. Tell me what you desire!" 

"I have none!" snapped Norrell. "Thank you very much, but I want for nothing." 

It was of all things what Strange had least expected to hear from the older magician, least of all spoken with such conviction. Norrell was forever wanting things, big and small – to control English magic, to be respected, to sit in the most comfortable chair in any room. 

"A marvel among living creatures!" The sea's voice was agitated, and its waves beyond the door seethed and roiled. 

"I do not claim to be," said Mr Norrell coldly. "However it is and whatever you want, I am still a magician and this is still my house, and you _will_ leave." 

And then it did. At least, Strange supposed that was what happened. What he mainly felt was the cold power releasing his body, whereupon he collapsed to the floor. The floor was surprisingly dry and remarkably comfortable, and he intended to stay where he was until the prickling of his limbs coming back to life faded somewhat. 

"Mr Strange? Are you... quite well?" 

"Certainly not," said Strange, sitting up very unwillingly. "I am deeply shamed. It will probably prove fatal." 

Mr Norrell carefully shut the door – beyond which was nothing more alarming than the landscape where they had previously established themselves – and returned to Strange, offering his hand in an uncertain way and looking most anxious. 

"I believe," added Strange, climbing to his feet without Norrell's assistance, "that you have just saved me from certain watery death, sir." 

"Oh," said Mr Norrell, dropping his hand to his side. "But you are unharmed, then?" 

Strange was in truth unharmed beyond his expectations. The ache had gone out of his muscles, and even his clothes were as dry as if the whole episode had never happened. But his thoughts were noisy and uncomfortable. 

Another, who did not know Gilbert Norrell so well, might have assumed that he had no feelings strong enough in his shrunken frame to amount to a heart's desire – one might have said no heart at all. Strange knew, though he could not always entirely credit, that Norrell's feelings on certain points ran very deep indeed. For him to say what he had with enough conviction to send a malevolent magical sea packing must mean he truly had all he desired. That was an unsettling thought. 

What did Norrell have, after all? His library, out of reach of his enemies. His house, with all his possessions. And indefinite confinement to a Pillar of Darkness – with Jonathan Strange, his sometime pupil, erstwhile enemy, and now enforced companion.

"And I suppose my wishes are so much moonshine," muttered Strange. "Typical!" 

"I beg your pardon?" said Norrell, with a bewildered and more than usually uneasy look at Strange. 

"I said, I am quite well, sir. We should return to our work, if we are to be ready in time." 

"Yes, certainly! I am so glad you feel as I do," said Norrell eagerly. He went on ahead. 

Strange waited to be angry or upset. He waited all through the argument on how to break the final enchantment on the Dreaming Queen's bark and all through the careful preparations for the first four enchantments (Norrell would have it that there being five in all was somehow significant, but Strange had not yet gathered how) and all through a more makeshift dinner (or whatever meal it was) than usual. In the end he was struck instead by the realization that there was after all something irresistible in the notion of forming a part of another living being's heart's desire – even if the heart did belong to Gilbert Norrell.


End file.
